My Blogs : First Opinion ; Nuclear Issues ; My Voice

My Website : www.radsafetyinfo.com

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Health Concerns of radiation exposure from mobile towers/phones

Please refer to the article entitled “Addicted to cellphones? – India Government tells Parliament excessive use of mobiles harmful” published in today’s Times of India (Times Nation, page no. 15). The Union Health Minister is cautioning the public against the excessive usage of mobile phones. There were articles which appeared in Mumbai Mirror (“Red alert on Cell tower radiation”, in July, 2008, and the recent article “JJ hospital docs get cell tower jitters”, dated January 24, 2009) and Times of Navi Mumbai article “Illegal mobile towers to go”, dated January 11, 2009) reporting the radiation levels in different areas much exceeding the internationally accepted levels.

In spite of repeated news appearing in World Wide Web,
http://radsafe.blogspot.com
www.radsafetyinfo.com
http://icareforyou2007.blogspot.com

little attention is paid to the harmful effects of such non-ionizing radio-frequency (RF) radiation emitted by the towers and mobile phones. The expected mobile phone usage is projected to be 500 million (half of the population) within a short period of time. As per the recent reports, of the service providers have projected erection of over 90,000 base stations, signal booster antennae all over India to meet the ever increasing demand even from rural areas.

Why no serious efforts are made by the government to regulate and control these activities? Are politicians and Babus are being pressurized by the rich service providers’ lobby against taking any action? Why not ban the latest silly ad – Walk while talk - from Idea Cellular? Before RF related health effects are shown in the public in catastrophic magnitude, it is absolutely necessary to take action on war footing. Better late than never!

Friday, July 10, 2009

Nuclear disarmament

The US President Barack Obama has been actively proposing nuclear disarmament at a time when even the smaller nations such as North Korea and Iran are trying to build-up their own nuclear arsenal. The concept of nuclear disarmament is easy to talk about, but very difficult to implement.

What happens to the thousands of tons of fissile materials such as plutonium and enriched uranium in the war-heads which will become redundant and can fall into the hands of the terrorist groups? In the nuclear-weapon countries, the weapons must be of very old design and assumed to be in a state which calls for up-gradation to ensure safety and suitability for current strategic applications. Considering the cost of dismantling and reassembling, it is advisable for these countries to go for disarmament.

Unless serious efforts are made to recycle the fissile materials, probably as fuel in nuclear power reactors, it is dangerous to go for nuclear disarmament.